---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Jan 2, 2008 8:58 PM
Subject: J-School Bhutto and Pakistan
To: pg@harvardsf.org
Hi Perry,
Forwarded is an email sent from Manal, a first-year student of my J-school
who is from Pakistan. She has great points in this brilliant email. Check
it out.
Best,
Linda
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: J-School Bhutto and Pakistan
From: "Manal ..." <manal...@berkeley.edu>
Date: Fri, December 28, 2007 9:19 pm
To: faculty@journalism.berkeley.edu,
staff@journalism.berkeley.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(I wrote this email yesterday but wasn't able to send it because the
Internet was down all over the city)
Dear all,
I am just stunned right now. Thank you for your emails...I am ok and so is
my family. It's Friday morning and the whole city is pretty much shut
down, people aren't going to work, all the markets are closed, even the
gas stations, the streets are deserted save for police vans, and Lahore
looks like a ghost town. Buses aren't running, neither are domestic
flights and trains. Last night all mobile phone networks (except one) were
down, but those are working now and so is cable TV and Internet
(sporadically), so we can at least watch the news (most news channels were
restored after the emergency blackout some weeks ago). I am dying to go
out in the streets with a camera and talk to people, but my parents have
me besieged in the house so far because its not safe.
I don't know what to think. We didn't like Bhutto, but this is just...
shocking. When we heard the news, Thursday evening about 7pm, I was at my
cousin Mina's house preparing for her mehndi. A Mehndi is the main fun
music-dance-henna celebration that precedes a wedding. All us girls were
dressed in brightly colored ghararas, skirts, with bangles, henna on our
hands and orange flowers in our braided hair, the house bustling with
people before we departed for the plush tented ground next door where the
Mehndi was supposed to take place, when an uncle watching the news in
another room rushed out and said Benazir had been injured during a suicide
blast at her rally in Rawalpindi and CNN had pronounced her dead.
It didn't sink in. We were just like, no, it can't be. She's probably just
hurt. It's a rumor. Seconds later the electricity went out, so we couldn't
watch the TV, and phone lines were jammed, so we just forgot about it
because nobody wanted to mar the evening's happiness, an evening we had
been looking forward to and preparing for for months.
But when the time for the event came, and all the family went down to the
tent to receive the guests, and no guests arrived, we began to worry. It
was confirmed that Benazir was dead, from fatal gunshots - now news
started to trickle in that rioting had started in Pindi, Islamabad,
Karachi and Lahore. Mobs of angry supporters of the PPP, Benazir's party,
were blockading thoroughfares, burning cars and tyres and storming gas
stations in the older parts of the city. We started receiving calls from
friends saying they were stuck inside their homes because of fires burning
outside or from fear of being mobbed on the streets, or stranded in
traffic holdups for 2 hours at a stretch. Like everyone else at the
mehndi, I was in disbelief. We tried to shake it off, the young people
especially, because it was my cousin's Mehndi, a time we ought to be
laughing, celebrating, happy. My cousin, too, ignored it best as she
could, smiling in spite of the fact that her closest friends weren't there
beside her, but we all knew that something terrible had been unleased with
Bhutto's murder, with terrible consequences in the hours, days and weeks
to come. Benazir Bhutto had been a friend of the bridegroom's family, and
was even invited to the post-wedding party on the 29th of December.
At the end, only 50 of the 200 expected guests made it to the mehndi
event. There was no music and no dancing, the DJ went home without playing
a single song, nobody saw the dances we had been practicing for 2 weeks,
the bright lights inside the tent were turned off - The nation was
officially in mourning, though it was more out of fear of mindless
retaliation. But we were still lucky - we later heard that two other
outdoor tented wedding events in the city had been stormed by angry
rioters bearing flaming torches, and guests had been beaten with sticks.
I tuned into local TV channels this morning to see them making a martyr
out of Benazir, like her father was made before her. Black and white
photos of her in her youth, mournful music playing in the
background, everything designed to induce tears in even her opponents. But
I don't agree with that. It is not the job of the media to eulogize
political leaders, living or deceased, and play up people's emotions to
such a degree - and Western media like CNN & BBC are following suit. Their
coverage is appallingly one-sided, why I do not understand. It is a sad
day, no doubt, I am sad that this happened, I am sad for Benazir and her
family, but I am sadder still for Pakistan, and what has followed since
last night. There is complete anarchy on the streets of Karachi, and in
Larkana, Bhutto's ancestral village in Sindh. It is mindless violence.
People are burning banks, hospitals, bazaars, trains, all for the death of
one person.
And the images and comments on TV are just fanning the flames. Nobody is
calling for an end to the violence, for people in Pakistan to calm down
and not attack each other. It is not the end of the world. Benazir's death
does not mean Pakistan has "lost" all hopes for democracy, as the Western
media is portraying it. As always, the media ignores history, ignores the
past, and right is ignoring all critical voices. Did she do any good when
she was in power before? Why did this happen to her? Who is responsible? I
don't know, and I don't know when we will know, if ever. Many people here
seriously doubt the supposed Al-Qaeda link - it does seem convenient to
dump every act of violence in this region on that mythical monster.
One can blame Musharraf's government, for failing to provide adequate
security at the rallies, for declaring emergency and the general
instability that created - but people in Pakistan, intellectuals, the
educated cadres, are angry at another party too - the U.S. government. It
is well-known that the U.S. govt 'engineered' Bhutto's return to Pakistan,
forcing Musharraf to drop corruption charges against her though he was
unwilling to do so (while Nawaz Sharif did not get the same treatment).
Bhutto as well as Musharraf knew of the dangers involved in her return, in
the compromise she struck up with Musarraf, in the kind of claims she was
making, her open support for U.S. policies, and what she would do if she
were Prime Minister - yet she courted danger, she invited danger by
sticking her head out out of her armoured vehicle at the rally in Liaquat
Bagh yesterday, the same place where Pakistan's first Prime Minister
Liaquat Ali Khan was assasinated in 1951.
And now, now that the country seems to have descended into chaos, many
Pakistanis feel that other parties may have something to gain -
Musharraf's opponents within the country, for instance, or even the U.S.
govt, for an opportunity to intervene 'more' directly in the affairs of
this strategic, Muslim majority nuclear power.
That's another thing the foreign media needs to back down on - the nukes
issue. The nukes are not going anywhere, and remain firmly in the control
of the army, as they always have. The Western obsession with Pakistan's
nukes is maddening, and really the very least of our worries right now.
Our worry is the safety of the citizens from crazy mobs and corrupt,
toady, sham democracies like the kind the upcoming elections are likely to
bring into power. The elections now seem utterly pointless and farcical
with the two key opposition parties not running anymore (Benazir's PPP and
Nawaz Sharif's PML-N), and only the ruling government in Punjab PML-Q and
the MQM (both Musharraf's allies) in the running. If the U.S. wants
stability in Pakistan, then it needs to stop thinking about neutralizing
our nuclear weapons or demonizing the religious factions or propping up
dictators or so-called democrats, and instead directing its aid towards
schools, hospitals and village-level development, political institutions
and legal systems and helping Pakistan honor its constitution and its
laws. There is no other way.
As I speak, the city of Karachi is in flames. The army has been called in,
and a friend in Karachi feels a Musarraf-PPP showdown is looming in the
city. The PPP, now under the chairmanship of Benazir's husband Asif
Zardari, a thug of the higher order, feel invincible because of their
loss. "Any voice of criticism against the PPP (in Karachi) is like signing
your death warrant," my friend says.
But we don't want to be at the PPP's mercy, or Zardari's mercy, of all
people. We want to live our lives in peace, have our weddings and funerals
in peace. My cousin's wedding, scheduled for tomorrow at a big banquet
hall in a fancy hotel, is now cancelled, and there will now just be a
small reception at their house.
We are sick and tired of politics. We don't care who's ruling anymore - we
just want peace.
And we need prayers for Pakistan, prayers and positive support.
Still in shock,
Manal
December 28th, Lahore